


Zomal

by Schemilix



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schemilix/pseuds/Schemilix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How was the Necrohol born?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zomal

The taught rope is merciful as a broken neck. Below the gallows a pendulous body does not bleed. Germonique shuts his eyes, slowly.  
"He's dead," he says, to no-one, though of course Zomal is listening. Before the magnitude or even flavour of his emotions (relief? loss? guilt? loathing?) can solidify, the power held in that small body hammers at any Mage or Viera present for a dozen miles.  
Something screams and the Mist curdles, goes rancid. Besides him, Mrja gasps and, with the grace of a Viera, buckles to the floor.  
Germonique can taste it in the boiling Mist. Her rage. Her loss. Altima.  
"Your vainglorious godling... she rages," Zomal offers. The voice scratches at the back of his mind. "Your 'Great Crystal'."  
Zomal feels Germonique's ripple of understanding and leaves the sentence there, its alien intelligence probing the surroundings. The Blood-Glyph on Germonique's chest prickles as it always does with the Time God's subtle threat.  
The world lists and reels, sharply, and water rises. Germonique also rises, jumping to his feet and threading with an assassin's ease through the suddenly panicked onlookers.  
"Zomal," he hisses, unheard over the melée of voices. Any eavesdropper would only hear the whispering, guttural dialect of Old Kilean even if they tried. "Something went wrong."  
As he says that, he sees an airship from the corner of his eye. Its engines stutter and, ponderously, the great machine lurches out of the sky.  
"I am aware." Zomal is always aware. "We predict a total loss of life. This includes yours, Hume."  
"Excellent," Germonique snaps, throwing up his arms. "Is there anything you can do?"  
"We can, yes. You are but one vessel I did not request."  
Germonique always prefers to swear in Rozarrian. If Zomal understands, it does not comment.  
"What other crazy bastard is going to let you use him as a plaything? Just get me out."  
"Beyond my capabilities," it says, frostily. Then, after a pause long enough to consider what Germonique _had_ thought the far-off concept of his mortality, it concedes,  
"I can preserve this place."  
Curious wording. Germonique looks at the prone Viera who has sat so regally by his side. She could be dead.  
Zomal continues. "For it, I will need sacrifice."  
"I didn't ask you to spare me by killing me," Germonique spits, his panic showing as sharp-toothed spite.  
"Your mere life would be insufficient," the voices thrum. "I will spare you. And you will be the sole survivor."  
Zomal speaks or spoke or will speak in manifold voices, some stolen from men not yet born.  
"I will make of Mullonde a Necrohol."  
Germonique looks around - to the rising water, the dense shiver of Mist he is sure even a Hume without magick-touched eyes can see. It looks as if there is a crack in the sky.  
At the Bangaa and Viera and Moogles and fellow Humes, and their lives, and what must be thoughts and dreams and, of course, terrors. How a child searches for his mother.  
And how he hates all of them. Hated them since he was a child and he was taught the hate of the Gods. And how they will always carry in them the death of that mortal body, a death that Germonique can only feel belongs to him alone.  
"Aji," he murmurs, and then, "Do it." After a pause he adds, with brutal logic, "They're dead anyway."  
He even goes so far as to draw his swords but, of course, this creature needs no help from blades. He feels the scars he carved into his chest flare with pain and tastes blood as Zomal reaches out with myriad hands and claws and nameless appendages, claiming a hundred lives to spare one that cannot love even itself.


End file.
